NO ONE has more information to manage than governments. This motherlode has been a catalyst for the IT business since its early days.

The advent of U.S. social security was the making of IBM when it won the contract to record millions of Americans on punch cards in 1935. Computerizing Medicare was the big break for Ross Perot’s EDS in the 1960s.

Nova Scotia’s data lode is more modest. But leveraging it into a bigger jobs proposition and a growth strategy is a key part of the Dexter government’s new deal with IBM this week.

The province will transfer 75 government IT jobs, and responsibility for operations software it shares with health authorities, school boards and municipalities, to a 10-year IBM contract. This will be the kernel of a Global Delivery Centre IBM will build in Halifax to serve Canadian and world markets in the fast-growing business of analytics (extracting useful information from data) and optimization (using it to improve operations and maximize profits).

The ambitious aim of the centre (one of 30 IBM has in the world and the only one it will build in Canada) is to create 500 additional jobs over eight years. It will be helped by a payroll rebate and incentives for recent graduates and skilled expats who want to come home. But the key is the province’s ability to turn out a reliable supply of skilled graduates —the same carrot that has enticed Calgary’s Projex Technologies to aim at creating 440 oilsands engineering jobs in Halifax in the next five years.

IBM calls the centre’s business “big data” and it has the potential to make a very big splash in the provincial economy. Besides the 500 jobs target, IBM will work with five universities and the community college to develop an analytics curriculum, support research and contribute the latest technology. The plan is to have courses available within three months.

An analytics centre of excellence in Halifax has other compelling advantages. It’s a natural incubator for start-ups by entrepreneurial employees. Developing leadership and expertise in this field is a great chance to improve the quality and cost of public service delivery in areas like health, education and local government.

And transferring to a centre of this calibre is surely a great opportunity for government IT staff, too. For them, as for young graduates, the message that IBM is offering you a good job in Halifax does not look at all like bad news.